#GirlLove: YouTube Star Superwoman’s Girl Empowerment Campaign

This is called a Rafiki Bracelet. You can shop for these at the ME to WE website among other collectibles such as cups, stockings, dark chocolate, imaani bracelets and a whole range of watches and jewelry.

The innovative social organization ME to WE sells products that make an impact, products that people to change the world with their everyday consumer choices. Their mission is to create options for consumers like us to make decisions that are informed, decisions about what we buy, what we experience and how we live. They hope that by making people understand the impact of their actions, they’ll help empower people the world over.

ME to WE works with merchandise sales, volunteering trips that allow young adults to partake in health, education and development projects in different countries and with the help of their charity partner WE Charity, they have built more than 1000 schools around the world, empowered more than 200,000 children with education and helped hundreds of communities with water and sanitation projects, medical resources and alternative income programs.

YouTube star Lilly Singh, who is also an actress, comedian and rapper and goes by the alias iiSuperwomanii on Youtube, launched the #GirlLove Rafiki Bracelet in 2016, an accessory piece with ME to WE for her birthday. The #GirlLove Rafiki Bracelet is her way of continuing #GirlLove, her social media campaign encouraging women to stop the girl-on-girl hate and start spreading the love. Every time somebody purchases a #GirlLove Rafiki Bracelet, the proceeds will help provide a girl in Kenya with access to primary school education.

The word rafiki means ‘friend’ in Swahili and the #GirlLove Rafiki Bracelet acts as a reminder for girls to leave all their girl-on-girl negativity behind and to build each other up to achieve the greatest heights.

Lilly visited Kenya to make the rafikis herself. She learned about the different types of Rafikis that one can make, where the proceeds go to and how the proceeds actually impact the girls of Kenya.

The women in Kenya that Lilly spoke with narrated their tales to her and they spoke of how they never got access to education themselves. One of the women had been sold to her husband’s family at the age of 15 in exchange for a cow and blanket. Most girls aren’t sent to school because they’re put to work fetching water. WE Charity has helped set up a well and and water system at the village so the young girls can attend school as well as fetch water. In 2016 alone, more than 30000 bracelets were sold which garnered enough funds for 600 girls’ education. Watch the video here.

We believe in the Flutur effect, that the smallest of acts can cause miracles to happen. What happens if every person who can afford it shells out just a little bit of money to buy a Rafiki bracelet? The girls of Kenya get the education they deserve and become the greatest version of themselves that they were destined to become.